Reading Time: 11 minutes In the farmyard that once belonged to Nick Schmidt, lake water now laps towards his grain bins, outbuildings and corrals. A vintage car sits in water nearly up to its bumper. Looking at the scene, Dwight Odelein, a local farmer and nephew of Schmidt, recalls that 20 years ago, the water was five or six […] Read more
Drowning in rain
How do you shed water in wet years yet conserve water in dry? Farmers in this small Saskatchewan watershed wrestle with the kinds of issues that may soon engulf the country
Rural distress
As Jane’s story shows, spousal abuse is a stubborn fact of life for many country women
Reading Time: 11 minutes She was a rodeo queen with a wide circle of friends that included both men and women. And she still loves horses, although she’s had to put her equestrian activities on the back burner until she recovers financially. I catch her on the phone one evening after work. She is calm and thoughtful, pausing as […] Read more
A new era on the farm begins
We’re living at the dawn of the robot as hired farmhand
Reading Time: 6 minutes A friend has been keeping me posted by email about her trouble finding a full-time employee for the family farm in Saskatchewan. If it didn’t represent such a serious problem for the operation, the details would actually be pretty funny. A few — how do I say it? — less-than-adequate applicants are all her efforts […] Read more
Home on the range
So you think you could ranch in this almost forgotten corner of Saskatchewan?
Reading Time: 14 minutes It’s on the network of narrow highways that snake through the rolling, grass-covered hills of southwestern Saskatchewan that you first notice the quiet. You can drive for 50 miles at a time and only see the occasional farmyard off in the distance. In contrast to the busy Trans-Canada Highway to the north with its continuous […] Read more
Who’s buying up Canadian farmland?
Are non-farmers snapping up too much Canadian farmland? Nobody knows, especially in Ottawa
Reading Time: 5 minutes Again this winter, ownership of farmland is a heated topic in coffee shops across rural Canada. Rumours abound. Sometimes, it’s foreign buyers who are said to be gobbling up huge chunks of prime farmland, paying prices that Canadian farmers can’t afford. Other times, it’s pension funds or rich non-farm investors. Whoever tells the stories, the […] Read more
A message from April Stewart, Country Guide's Associate Editor
